The ever-present drone of the propellors on the small airship on loan from the Baronian chapter of the Igalan adventurer's corps continues to beat as it heads, slowly but surely, from the staging point in Doma City to the island in the sky.
There were six people on that airship who accepted this duty- six people who were, quite honestly, not risking all that much for fame, fortune, and some rather dandy gadgets.

Molokidan sat on the floor in the passenger cabin, rocking back and forth impatiently, looking at the other five people in the cabin.

Finally, some excitement! he said to himself. I'm glad I managed to get signed up to this deal! This looks like it's gonna be really fun!

He stared around the room, his large blue eyes taking in every detail of the others. The young kid seemed very out of place.

He stood about 5" tall, maybe 5"1' if you counted the mess of blue hair on his head. He had a round, child-like face, with large eyes, rosy cheeks, and pouty lips. His ears were longer than the average human, and finned a little bit on the ends. But then again, such is the norm for a sushijin.

His body was not superbly muscular or anything, but rather formed like a child's itself, small, compact, with not an ounce of fat on him. He was wearing a lime green tunic, with a purple undershirt underneath. Since he was finding the room to be a bit warm, he had already taken off his olive green jacket, which he had brought along in case it got chilly.

He wiped beats of sweat from his forehead, switching around his brown-booted feet, sitting indian-style. He looked around impatiently, his eyes once again being drawn back to the other people in the room. It was apparent that Molokidan was not one of patience.

"So!" he said suddenly, bouncing back and forth while seated, looking at everyone. "What's everyone's names? Mine's Molokidan S. Tunksuu!" he seemed to enunciate every syllable too much, his voice becoming way too high and loud for the small room. "Are you guys excited to go on the trip too?!"

Michael Klaus did not even hear his fellow adventurer speak, even when he was sitting right beside Molokidan. He did not hear much of anything right at the moment, and did not even feel the stuffy heat inside the shared room.

At 6' 6", Klaus seemed to tower over most of the other adventurers even while sitting. However, that intimidating effect is spoiled by his boyish and excited appearance, the slightly dyed reddish-black hair, and the uniformly brown clothing. He was still wearing his brownish backpack despite the discomfort of doing so while sitting, exacerbated by the fact the broadsword tied by the side was not adjusted properly, pushing the entire pack up-wards and making a hole on the wooden floor planks with its tip.

One of his numerous (magic) books from said backpack was open on his crossed legs, but concentrating on that book was not the reason he did not notice. In fact, disturbingly, Michael Klaus was drooling. His mouth half open, the finger used to sign the contract resting across the lower lip, forgotten where he had sucked the blood-drawing self-inflicted injury. A glitter could almost be seen in his eyes, almost seeming to shine as brightly with promised delights as a kid promised lots of candy. In fact, someone assuming that would not be far off: In his thoughts right at the moment, it probably goes like this.....

To be connected was a marvelous thing, Winfred would tell you. To have a good merchant for a contact could get you so much these days, and at a reasonable price. To have a cadre of them who owed you a favor, well, there was little that couldn't be arranged with a force like that.

To be old friends with a master of firearms and a shrewd woman would get you a nice piece of gadgetry and more advice than you could handle on how to use and care for it.

This, on the other hand, had mostly been luck. It was something Win rarely had, something he had learned time and time again not to rely on. "Luck" had brought him a life on the streets and many of the secrets he tried so hard to conceal. He idly rubbed his hands, feeling the coldness of the invisible link around his finger. Still, it had brought him here, for better or worse, and he would have to trust to whatever luck he still had in him.

Speaking of the nice piece of gadgetry, he was engaged in cleaning a very recent line of Valthi revolver. The metal was still fresh, and the pistol looked like it had never been fired. Propped up against the wall next to him were detailed maintenence instructions; Nevareh had been very clear that he would be paying for damages or neglect.

A sudden pain in his forehead swelled. Wincing, he put a hand to his head and came to a realization: all the youthful exuberence in the room was making him feel ill. He could tolerate it, for now, but he desperately hoped a good dose of reality would calm those two the fuck down. Maybe the Valthi could give him a hand, they always seemed good at such things...

The reason why Chantelle went on this expedition to the floating castle was that she didn't have much in the way of either common sense or a real survival instinct. She would have volunteered for the catapult, but she saw the people with the airship first.

Chantelle allowed herself a short victory celebration, which stopped as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown. She then went out of the passenger cabin to watch the ground roll by from several thousand feet up, but she was eventually sent back into the room, just in time to hear Molo's introduction.

"Hi, Molokidan. I'm Chantelle Wijngarten. And I'm quite sure that this is going to be fun!"

A man wearing a strange pair of goggles on his forehead in the strange mess of red hair that seems to shoot out in every direction catches the vibe off of the other more excited members of the group- he himself is excited, so it's not exactly that hard to imagine. Dressed in what looks like a snowboarder gone awry, with shoulderpads, elbowpads, kneepads, footpats, fingerless gloves, and a hat that clearly proves the existence of a mad hatter, he would look funny if he were deathly serious. However, he isn't. Warren Kane secretly prides himself on not being deathly serious.
He's average height and average build, though his brilliant green eyes seem to actually shine with intense excitement.
He's clearly going to enjoy this trip.
"Heya! I'm Warren Kane, arcane expert extraordinaire! I'm coming mostly because Kane Enterprises, due to a legal disbute, isn't allowed to 'work any form of mystic incantation with experimental intent' in the country of Doma for a couple of months... Who knew that stone could burn? Eh... anyway, it's a pleasure to meet you!"

Molokidan smiled at Chantelle, the pretty woman who had answered him first. She was good-looking, and he liked grown-up women who smiled a lot. "Nice to meet you Chantelle! Yeah, I think this is going to be really fun!"

He turned to the self-proclaimed arcane expert, looking the man over. Molokidan took a liking to his haphazardly-chosen clothing immediately, especially his neat hat. This man immediately came off to the young kid as being a 'cool guy'. "Hi Warren!" he said. "I hope we can become good friends! And I like your clothes a lot."

Molokidan looked around to the others quickly, to see if they wanted to join in the conversation, then turned back to Chantelle and Warren. "But do any of you know stuff about the castle? I mean, what kind of magical stuff does it have inside? Monsters? Traps? Food?" Molo's eyes seemed light up at the mention of the last one.

Then with a visible start, he noticed the people in the room, as if the whole bunch of them had 'poofed' right in front of him. Not to say that he thought they appeared suddenly, or was not following the conversation (that piece of information was stored away by the less obsessed parts of his mind), just that he was only getting startled out of a trance.

Reviewing the conversations that had been said around him, he first turned and leaned towards Warren Kane (while hastly wiping his mouth) "Hi, I'm Michael Klaus." And after a slight pause, " and How do you make that stone burn?"

Not straying from cleaning the gun, Winfred piped up. Someone had to let the air out of their sails, or they'd be prancing around the island pushing every button and switch, regardless of whether or not they said "magma valve release."

"Sorry, kid, we're going to a place that's probably been around thousands of years. There won't be food.

But you know what there -will- be? Thousands of spiders, bigger than your hand, rabbits that can lop your head off with a single bite, and the most dreaded beast of them all... the great Tonlyeroth, a beast so mysterious and deadly that no man has seen it and lived!

We're all going to our dooms, and that's why you lot got chosen. More expendable, you know. And the contracts? Signing away everything we have to the fat cats. It's a pretty standard gig."

"Really?!" Molokidan's eyes sparkled as he turned to Winfred. The man was holding a revolver, which Molokidan stared at for a total of .2 seconds before losing interest, then turned back to the man's face.

"I wanna see this Tonlyeroth thing! And the bunnies too! How do you know so much about the castle, Mister?" Molokidan said, inching closer to Winfred, who had just accidentally found a new best friend.

Inwardly cursing, Winfred gave a low chuckle. "It's quite simple, really. I'm sure any of the people here can explain a 'spyglass' to you, but basically, you can look at things from far away. As for Tonlyeroth, you never -know- he's there, but the picked-clean bones festering with maggots are always a dead giveaway; I heard they found a few that dropped from the place."

Putting the last bits of the revolver in order, he smiled thinly at Molokidan. "As for the bunnies... I could show you, if you want. But it might not be everything you expect..."

A slender, pale-skinned man sat slightly apart from the rest of the group. Though slim, his body seemed tensed with a wiry, athletic strength, and his features were oddly delicate for a man, looking as though they had been chiselled out of marble. His dark hair was bound back in a short, neat ponytail, which would likely reach just past his shoulders when undone. He was dressed in a rather monochromatic ensemble of black, with a large trenchcoat and shades obscuring his eyes. Nonetheless, he seemed engrossed in studying his knee, which he had drawn over his leg.

Damian Vaza really didn't get along with most people, and was already mentally ticking off Michael, Molokidan, and possibly Kane and Chantelle as being likely sources of annoyance ont his trip.

Wonder if you'd feel the impact after throwing yourself off the castle... if it'd all just end in one moment, or... he wondered idly, before shaking his head slightly, leaving his self-induced trance of recollection. He didn't care about the material benefits from the trip so much as the opportunity to do something with himself other than think morbid thoughts.

Still...

He glanced towards the others in the group, giving a thin smile before speaking with a crisp Valthi accent.

"Actually, if you read the contracts (written in an obscure cuneiform, I believe), they don't mention signing everything away. Though we're doing this on comission, we DO get to keep a few pieces that we find that we don't consider of archaeological or technological value, like a sword made of gold. Or some plain old boullion. Though coins would be archaeological, as would extremely large gems. But small gems are fair game... Though I'm not after any gems- I just want some first-hand experience with some artifacts so I can learn a few things. I mean, they can't expect us to take EVERYTHING we find back... can they?" Warren seems a bit nervous when he thinks about having to lug the whole structure of the island back to Doma.

Molokidan turned to Damian. Now this guy looked scary! He was glad to be over by his new best buddy, Winfred, and not sitting over there by the scary guy with the ponytail. He labeled the man as "Scary!" and thought nothing more of it for the moment.

Molo turned back to Winfred. "Yeah!" he said. "Teach me! Have you seen Tonlyeroth? Do you think that if you got in a fight with Tonlyeroth, you could beat him? Which monster do you think we will run into first, the rabbits or Tonlyeroth? What is Tonlyreoth's weak point?!" he hopped up and down next to Winfred, anxiously awaiting an answer.

At that point, a crew member of the airship, dressed in a clean white uniform, enters the passenger cabin through the pressure door. He salutes, then nods, and begins to read from a clipboard.
"Hello, passengers. We will be arriving at our destination shortly, so please be sure to stow all free-moving materials into secure positions and put on your impact gear."
At this point, Warren raises his hand...
"Sir, are airship landings always turbulent enough to warrant putting padding all over your passengers and equipment? And if so... why aren't you wearing any?"
The crewman, at this point, smiles, nods towards Warren, smiles, and then looks back at his clipboard.
"Oh, we aren't landing, which you should have known if you read article VII, section 213 of your contracts."
Warren looks puzzled...
"But... how are we going to explore the island if we don't land?"
The crew member then laughs heartily at the question...
"Oh, you're going to land. We just aren't. It was deemed much too dangerous to attempt a landing of this craft on the island, so we're just jettisoning the passenger's compartment over the isle and then going on our merry way. You'll be perfectly safe in the impact gear, and the compartment has the utilities needed to attempt a landing on the ground nearby, with appropriate glider utilities and such. Thank you for flying with us!"
After delivering his short spiel, the crewman is absolutely sure to leave the room extremely quickly, and closes the door behind him. Then a cracking sound is heard from outside as the valve for opening the door is broken off, effectively trapping the party inside the compartment before anyone really has the option of reacting.

It took quite a while for Michael Klaus to absorb the meaning of the words that had been spoken, and another bit of time for the intellectual part of his mind to shake the magically-obsessed part of his mind awake.

When he finally understood, he bolted for the door... much too late to do anything significant....

"Hey, this is going to be neat!!" Molokidan said, looking around to see everyone else's expressions. "Let's all hold onto each other so no one gets hurt, guys!" he said. The kid reached out and grabbed Winfred's hands, anchoring himself to the man like a dead weight.

The shades hid his reaction, if any, to their prompt abandonment, but his composure remained remarkably cool. He made his way to Molokidan and his impromptu victim, sharply rapping the sushijin's hands before scanning the compartment for the impact gear.

Such lovely, lovely fear. It made quite a welcome change from the misguided spirit of adventure that had pervaded the compartment like the stench of raw sewage.

As for Winfred, he did a number of things. The first was to headbutt Molokidan in the face, followed by a flip of his wrists should that fail to loose the sushijin's hold. The second was to conclude that he was going to like Damian. The third was to holster and secure Nevareh's pistol.

The fourth was follow suit with the Valthi and look for some way to not end up breaking his neck in the landing.

"You know, for some reason, this reminds me of those people who were planning to launch a group of people through a catapult to get here." Chantelle said. "I think I would have tried that if this didn't pan out."

While she was talking, she was also heading over to secure herself with the impact gear. She paused, then tried to take one of the cushions from the chairs that were there, before finding out that they were firmly attached, as were the chairs. Grumbling, she returned to fastening herself and her equipment down.

"Owww!" Molokidan rolled on the ground, grabbing his forehead in pain. Due to the commotion, he must have accidentally headbutted me!! Poor guy.

He stood up, and walked over to the impact gear. Upon staring at it, the sushijin was immediately lost. He stared over at Winfred and Chantelle, watching them, and eventually got the hang of what to do. Although it ended up that most of the equipment was in the wrong places, it still harnessed the sushijin in, albeit upside-down.

Michael also busied himself with the ... the ... "Crash Gear... They sure make it sound useful and nice calling it 'Impact gear', but its nothing other than a bunch of cloth and padding to only just make sure no one dies in the **@$#** crash...."

Then one thought came to him, and he spoke to the rest: "Wait a minute, didn't they say 'Glider something-or-other' earlier? Wouldn't that need a pilot of some kind?"

Damian gave Molokidan a glance under his glasses, then ignored the entangled boy. He also refrained from commenting on Chantelle's mentioning of her alternative plan as he strapped himself in securely, checking his pistols and blade under the trenchcoat.

"I'm sure we will manage when the time comes," he replied to Michael, a trace of mild boredom in his voice despite the events unfolding about them.

Warren, after his initial shock, straps himself securely into his gear- the netting of leather thongs, rubber straps, padding, and well-situated metal looks otherworldly, but it's assumed that it works since the crewman didn't say anything like "Hope you survive!"

One problem with the gear has to do with putting it on- there aren't any instructions, anywhere, and even after doing everything they can think of doing, there are still a disturbing number of clasps and hooks that are unused, none of which fit eachother.

The other problem, which might be occuring to the more forethought-oriented members of the group, is going to be getting out of the impact gear- putting it on involves suspending yourself in a steel chassis by leather and rubber straps. Once you're fully covered with the gear, it's very, very hard to move without testing the limits of the most likely very-strong chassis or the tension strength of the solid and secure-seeming straps that are "protecting" you.

A third problem, which might have occured to Mike Klaus, is that there doesn't seem to be anything remotely resembling a cockpit from which to PILOT the contraption. But, that bridge might as well be crossed when it's come to.

Damian, on his part, was making himself as secure as he comfortably could while allowing his arms a reasonable amount of mobility. He did want to be able to remove the contraption after the crash, and if this increased his chances of an injury during landing... well, so be it.

Winfred had what might be called a healthy dislike of physical injury. He considered what he knew of the basic precepts of physics, such as inertia, gravity and acceleration. Then he considered the concept of all three of these conspiring to turn him into a thin carpet of gore across the ceiling or floor.

Then he decided to err on the side of getting stuck temporarily, rather than getting splattered rather permanently, and he buckled the impact gear quite thoroughly.

Hmmm. . .I think I got it! Molokidan was attached to the wall upside-down, his legs criss-crossed and attached to the wall, his arms splayed and attached to the only things he could find over the relatively empty room. His head was a few feet off the ground, just enough so if there were some bumps, he wouldn't crack his head open.

The clasps and belts were all criss-crossed and haphazardly attached all over the kid's body. Had he had some actual style, and natural appeal, he could have been mistaken for some sort of mental ward fashion contestant. He was content with his work though, and waited to crash as the blood began to rush to his head.

After the whole of the passenger compartment is situated, a period of time ensues... and nothing happens. It's quite annoying, actually, since the crewman came in and warned everyone to fasten themselves in, and yet nothing appears to be happening. The same thup thup thup is still audible, and nothing appears to have changed. The minutes of captivity in the strange impact chassis tick on.
"I wonder if they might have warned us a bit too-"

Suddenly, a shrill drilling sound is heard, as though a series of screws were being reversed out of their holding positions, a few ka-chunk kachunks seem to float out of the walls, and suddenly there no longer seems to be gravity in the passenger's compartment.

"I know we're falling already, so SHUT THE HELL UP!" snapped Damian, his temper visibly eroding as he snatched at his shades. His vivid green eyes were exposed, tense and narrowed as he hastily shoved the glasses into some corner of his coat.

Right... don't know how long 'til we land, but in the meantime...

The Valthi had to fight his body's instincts to coil up, forcing his limbs into relaxation. It would help him have less impact against his incompletely fastened crash gear once they hit the floating castle.

The fall wasn't long. Soon, the incredible feeling of weightlessness came to a crashing halt.
And then there was a great darkness.
-----------------------------------
About an hour later-----------------------------------

The beginnings of consciousness are beginning to creep into the sensoria of the party. The fall and crash wrought royal havoc on the senses of balance of the whole party, forcing them all into unconsciousness as their overwrought limbic systems tried in vain to make sense of what was happening.

The first thing they ought to notice is the air. It has a distinct tang, slighly different than the air of Doma and yet definitely not the taste of air that has been cooped up in a structure for ages.

The second thing they ought to notice is that they aren't dead, followed closely by the knowledge that the gear prevented them from being injured beyond bruises and soreness.

Finally, they ought to notice that they're upside-down, except for a certain sushijin who accidentally managed to make sure he was right-side up for the crash.

"Hey. . ." Molokidan said, working hard to wiggle his upper lip to stratch an itch on his nose. "Why are you guys all upside down? Didn't you put your impact gear on correctly??"

He tried to move to get out of his, but then realized that while he had successfully protected himself from any possible injury, he had also protected himself from removal. ". . .hmm, I wonder if it's supposed to work this way. . ."

"....kid. Shut up," Damian said wearily, cracking his eyes open. The blood rush to his head wasn't making him feel any better, and he rolled his shoulders slightly to ease the soreness. Though upside down, at least he had better odds of getting out of the gear than most of the others.

Though he was mightily tempted to leave a few of them just where they were.

With that delightful thought, he slowly tugged himself upward in the restraints, unfastening himself slowly as he slid to freedom.

This was not Win's day. Or Wednesday, being that such a thing didn't exist on Gaera. Being upside-down had a way of making him heady, and the crash had been substantially less than pleasant. He was hardly a strapping young lad, and yet he was trapped here in a beltway of his own buckles!

He struggled vainly to get free, cursing on the inside as was his wont to do. At this point he wanted little more than to comandeer whatever glider gear they had been given and get going the hell away from this godsforsaken group.

Chantelle was falling, falling indefinitely, into a black void which ate all light and all life, and there was only one thing to do.

She woke up.

Apparently, it had been a dream during her period of unconciousness. She noticed her soreness, and the fact that she was upside down. You know, I really should try being upside down more often. Maybe I'd get used to it. she thought.

She then went about trying to free herself from the web of straps she had secured herself in, certain that there was probably a hidden catch that would release her.

Note that she did not prepare herself for when she finally would release herself and land on her head.

"Wow, good job, Chantelle!" Molokidan cheered. "Do you have training in this sort of thing?"

The boy continued to wiggle around in his own creation, but his arms were twisted behind him in ridiculous positions, and there was no way he could reach around to undo any of the buckles from that angle.

"Can someone let me out?" he said, craning his neck to try and bite through the ropes. "My arms are going numb!"

Win forced a strained and embarassed smile as best he could, and was perfectly still. He looked to Damian and Chantelle, but mostly Damian. Like as not, the woman wasn't likely to unhook him without giving a near-fatal blunt injury. The Valthi might do so, but it would probably be intentional, and that was far better.

Meanwhile, Klaus had only just woken inside the cocoon of his suit. It had taken him a while to gather in the the fact that he was up-side down, another while to realize he could not move much, and a bit more to remember he was in a crashed glider...

Once he got all the facts straight, he immediately used his earlier plan: He "spelled" out a thin, triangular blade and used it to saw the nearest strap he could find...

OCC Note: that blade is fragile, and will break too often. That is if the spell succeed in the first place. (I have a feeling the island has an anti-magic field or something)